The Zombie Spy Protocol

My beanie —— my lucky hat, the one that hides my bangs when I'm having an awkward hair day —— sat crushed at the bottom of my backpack. I hadn't worn it since seventh grade, back when I thought accessorizing was a personality trait. Now? Now I was a junior who spent Friday nights conducting strategic ops from my bedroom.

"You're being literally obsessive," Maya had told me that afternoon, rolling her eyes so hard I thought they might detach. "It's not that deep."

She was wrong. It was absolutely that deep.

I lay on my floor, phone pressed to my face, scrolling through Instagram for the thousandth time. Call me what you want —— a creep, a weirdo, a certified zombie of dopamine addiction —— but I wasn't just scrolling. I was gathering intel. I was a spy in the war of high school romance, and my target was Jordan Hayes's caption from three hours ago.

"at the spot. u know the one 📍"

Maya's note in chemistry had been cryptic: "Saturday night. The cable bridge behind the rec center. 9 PM. Jordan will be there."

The cable bridge. Where middle schoolers went to claim they'd done things they definitely hadn't. Where couples carved their names into the wood like their love would outlast the weather.

My iPhone buzzed. Unknown number.

"ur mayas friend right??"

My heart did something embarrassing. I stared at the screen, thumbs hovering, overthinking every possible response. Cool and detached? Enthusiastic but not thirsty? The absolute wrong choice?

I finally typed: "yeah this is sam lol"

"cool. so maya said ur coming 2night"

The ellipsis. The lowercase. The casual vibe like this wasn't the most important moment of my entire sixteen years of existence.

"yeah if thats ok with u"

"obviously lol"

I spent two hours getting ready —— hair, outfit, reapplying deodorant three times because my nervous sweat was becoming a real issue. I almost grabbed the old hat before catching myself. No. I was past that.

The cable bridge was empty when I arrived at 8:57. Early. Too early. I leaned against the railing, scrolling through nothing on my phone to look busy, to look like someone who just happened to be here and hadn't planned their entire night around this single moment.

"You're really here."

I looked up. Jordan stood a few feet away, hands in pockets, looking unfairly good under the string lights someone had draped across the bridge framework.

"Yeah," I said, like I wasn't a complete zombie of nervous energy. "Me too."

"Good." Jordan stepped closer. "That's good."

I'm not going to say everything changed. I'm not going to say it was some movie moment. But I will say this: when Jordan's hand brushed mine, I understood why people wrote their names on bridges. Why they carved initials into wood and hoped the weather held.

Some things, you want to last.

Later that night, my phone buzzed again. A photo request. Jordan, tagged in a picture from the bridge, some random account had captured us talking.

I accepted. I saved it. I didn't overthink it.

Okay, maybe I overthought it a little.

But that's okay. That's part of it too —— the zombie feelings, the spy work, the late-night analysis of every single word and emoji and pause. The hat-hidden parts of yourself you're still learning to show.

Turns out growing up isn't about stopping any of that. It's about finding someone who doesn't mind the mess.